Schlagwort: ‘hu-mimesis’

Larry Leifer lately pointed me towards the issue of human-robot relationships, which he refers to as “Hu-mimesis” in the sense, that robots might have to imitate human behavior to be accepted and trusted by its human counterparts or users, as we usually refer to them.

Larry did a great talk on hu-mimesis at mediaX at Stanford University, in which he points out three forms of dialogue in which humans and robots interact: information dialogue, emotion dialogue, and knowledge dialogue.

While this model does appeal to me as a communication scientist, I was immediately reminded of the four-sides-model, a model quite famous in Germany for interpersonal communication. It was developed by Friedemann Schulz von Thun and is also referred to as the four-ear-model [1].

The four-sides-model consists of the four sides factual information, self revelation, relationship and appeal, which all belong to a message. The idea is that messages can be sent and interpreted many-sided and that the recipient might not always understand what the sender intended to communicate.

The classic example Schulz von Thun uses is a man telling his wife that “the traffic light is green”, while waiting at a junction.

Factual information: The green sign is on.Self revelation: I want to get going.Relationship: You need my help.Appeal: Go!

If we want humans to trust robots such as self-driving cars (independently moving you with 100 mph or so…) we need to address all four sides. This is for the simple reason that we will rather trust a human-like (or hu-mimicked) object than a technical artefact [2].

The standard example “the traffic light is green” might just have gotten a whole new meaning…